The real objection is complexity: longest-string should be
O(length(l)) but sort pushes it up to O(n log n) or whatever.
My response is use argmax or define the problem as 'give me the n
longest strings'.
On Sep 23, 2009, at 2:15 PM, John Clements wrote:
>> On Sep 23, 2009, at 11:12 AM, Matthias Felleisen wrote:
>>>>> (define (longest-string los)
>> (first (sort los > #:key string-length)))
>>>> I thought of that, but it seems like the wrong program: I don't want
> the list sorted, I just want the maximum.
>> I suppose that from a purely declarative standpoint, you could argue
> that this doesn't necessarily imply extra computation, but that
> seems like a stretch.
>> John
>